1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic mail systems and, more particularly, to synchronization of electronic mail systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, various types of hand-held computing devices are commonly used. Examples of hand-held computing devices include pagers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), palm-top computers and electronic schedulers.
One popular hand-held computing device is PalmPilot produced by 3COM Corporation. The PalmPilot provides calendaring functions. A synchronization operation is requested by a user after the user physically connects the PalmPilot to the desktop computer over a dedicated cord or wire (e.g., typically using a cradle device). The synchronization operation allows (i) dates previously entered by a user into the PalmPilot to be synchronized with a calendaring program operating on a desktop computer and (ii) dates previously entered by the user of the desktop computer to be synchronized with the PalmPilot.
Some hand-held computing devices are able to send and receive electronic mail. The users of these devices typically have a desktop computer that connects to a network and enables the user to read, compose and send electronic mail. As such, these users have two mailboxes for receiving electronic mail, one for the hand-held computing device and another for the desktop computer. Conventionally, with respect to electronic mail, a user with multiple mailboxes for receiving electronic mail is able to forward electronic mail received in one mailbox to another mailbox (one-way forwarding). In addition, some hand-held computer devices (e.g., PalmPilot) are able to synchronize electronic mail when manually requested by a user. These systems providing for synchronization of electronic mail also do so over dedicated wires between the hand-held computer devices and the desktop computer.
Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for synchronizing different electronic mail accounts of a user.